Cafeterias everywhere use steam tables with removable pans as the means for keeping foods hot for serving. Steam tables essentially include an elongate reservoir of heated water with a table top cover running the length of the reservoir.
Holes, usually rectangular, are formed at intervals along the length of the cover. Sized and shaped for being partially received into these holes are steam table pans. These known pans have an inside recess for containing foods, an outside surface profile that registers with the pan-receiving holes, and include a flange at their upper margins. When a steam table pan is disposed in a pan-receiving hole, the flange rests against the cover of the steam table top cover along the edge portion of the pan-receiving hole while the remainder (outside surface profile) of the pan extends through the pan-receiving hole one in the cover to closely approach or contact the heated water below.
To contain steam within the confines of the steam table, the flange of a steam table pan is designed to lie substantially flat on the surface of the steam table cover. This makes removing such a pan from a steam table very difficult.
Some workers use knife edges to pry pans from their positions in the steam table cover. Such an approach carries obvious risks of injury. Other workers are known to pry the pan from its position using their fingernails. The problem with this latter approach is that once the seal is breached between the flange of the pan and the steam table cover, steam is quickly released thereby tending to burn the worker's fingers.
Also, because of the absence of space between the pan flange and the steam table cover when the pan is in position, placing a steam table pan into position usually involves a worker releasing the pan from his/her grasp and allowing it to fall into position. This can result in heated food splashing onto a worker, again burning the worker, or splashing into neighboring pans thereby contaminating the food therein.
A still further problem relates to the lack of handles on typical steam table pans. Workers charged with conveying steam table pans between the cooking and serving areas are known to use various means for handling these pans. Some use rags as potholders--rags which may be soiled in such a manner as to risk contaminating the food in the pan. Other workers use pliers or like tools to grasp the pan flanges--tools which are not truly suited for securely grasping such pans and which, in addition to presenting a working environment with the risks associated with dropping a pan filled with hot food, tend to damage the pans. Further still, such tools are prone to contamination from accumulated food and tend to disappear from the work place due to their utility outside of the work place. The latter problem increases operating costs to cafeteria management.
Problems associated with a lack of handles on steam table pans are not, as a practical matter, solved by simply adding handles. Not only would adding handles greatly increase the space consumed by a stack of pans (because of the position required to avoid interference with the nesting relationship between the pan and the steam table cover), they would significantly increase the cost of pans.
The food service industry has experienced, and is experiencing a long-felt need for an apparatus for safely and easily handling steam table pans. Such an apparatus would be one which is effective for its intended purpose, but which has little, if any, utility in the other contexts. The apparatus is also one which is easily separable from the pans while still providing fail-safe grasping of the pans during use. Still further, the apparatus should be easily cleaned and relatively inexpensive to make or purchase.